Walk the plank! Pirate Bay co-founder returned to Sweden, arrested for hacking

The Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg has been returned to Sweden to serve a one-year prison sentence for breaching copyright laws. But Svartholm's troubles are only beginning, as he was immediately arrested for alleged “cyber crimes.”

After land at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport on Tuesday, the 27-year-old file-sharing developer was taken into custody at the city's central police station, Bertil Olofsson, who heads the international section of Sweden's crime police, told Reuters.

But his legal problems are now compounding, as Swedish prosecutors believe Svartholm, along with other hackers, illegally obtained personal information from the country’s tax authority earlier this year.

According to Torrent Freak, the hack targeted Swedish IT company Logica, a firm that services the Swedish tax office. The tax numbers of 9,000 Swedes were later leaked online, making headlines around the country.

Two Swedes were subsequently arrested for their alleged role in the hack, one of whom was connected with The Pirate Bay from its inception.

Following his detention in Cambodia at Stockholm’s behest in late August, rumors began circulating on the Internet that Svartholm ‘s arrest and subsequent extradition were in fact connected with the alleged hacking of the Swedish IT firm and not his role in The Pirate Bay.

Svartholm had been hiding out in Cambodia following a 2009 trail in which he and three other Pirate Bay backers were convicted for their involvement in copyright infringement.

All four men maintained their innocence.

Svartholm claimed that poor health prevented him from attending his sentencing, prompting a judge to uphold his prison sentence and $1.1 million in fines. Svartholm skipped town, only to turn up later in Cambodia, where he resided until his extradition on Monday.

The Pirate Bay was founded by Svartholm and fellow hacker Fredrik Neij in 2003. Lauded by some as one of the world’s largest free file-sharing websites, and condemned by entertainment industry giants as the largest facilitator of illegal downloading, The Pirate Bay has become a focal point for the heated controversy surrounding peer-to-peer file sharing.

The Pirate Bay says that as it does not hold or transfer copyrighted material on its servers, merely providing links and BitTorrent files that allow multiple users to simultaneously share files through peer-to-peer technology.

Although the site has been shut down on several occasions, it has continued to pop up time and again around the world, with the organization currently running the website being registered in Seychelles.